The selection tools are used to facilitate the process of making selections of shapes, colors, and objects inside of Photoshop, and positioning them in the working image area. With tools like the magnetic lasso and magic wand, Photoshop packs a powerful array of selection gadgets!
In Photoshop, selections are used to work in a specified area, while not altering any of the area around it. In many regards, a selection is a lot like a stencil. You basically are enabling yourself to only paint in one area while the rest of your canvas is left unaffected.
There are a variety of tools to help you draw out specific sizes and shapes of selections in Photoshop. Move Tool Marquee tool
Perfect Circle and Square Selections Lasso Tools Magic Wand Tool Crop tool
The Move Tool is used for moving selected areas of an image, layers, shapes, and other objects.
To move a selected part of an image, simply select the move tool, and then click and drag your selection as you please. This will Cut the selection out from it�s current location, and reposition it to wherever you release the mouse button.
The marquee tools are used to make rectangular, elliptical, horizontal and vertical line selections. To create a selection with a marquee tool, simple hold down your mouse button over the active image area, and drag out your shape.
When making selections with the Rectangular Marquee Tool or Elliptical Marquee Tool, it�s possible to make perfect square and circular selections by holding shift when drawing our your selection.
The Lasso Selection Tools allow you to make selections of irregular shapes. Using the ordinary lasso tool, simply click and drag a freehand selection with your mouse. With the Polygonal Lasso Too, click to make various points which will define a selection, and finish your selection by clicking the starting point.
The Magnetic Lasso Tool sort of combines the first two tools mentioned here. You click once, and begin to drag a freehand selection around the object you wish to select. The magnetic lasso tool tries to automatically create points itself while you follow the edge of your object (you can define points by clicking if needed). The end result is a much smoother selection than the polygonal lasso tool will make.
The Magic Wand Tool is unlike the rest of the selection tools, in that is selects areas based on color. To use the Magic Wand Tool, you simply point and click the color you want to select in the active image area.
Take the diagram below for example. Using the Magic Wand Tool, it simply takes one click in the white area to make a selection of that space.
The Crop Tool works similarly to the Rectangular Marquee tool (see above if you have no short-term memory). The difference is when you press the [Enter/Return] key, it crops your image to the size of the box. Any information that was on the outside of the box is now gone. Not permanently, you can still undo.
